1. Do a comparative study with one of the works that we read as a group in class.
For example, you might do a comparative study between Sab and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin(the most known North American abolitionist novel), of Jorge Isaacs' María (a Columbian 'national romance' published in the 19th century). On another note, you could look at some of the William Faulkner stories about the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Bernardo Atxaga's Basque village of Obaba, Juan Rulfo's Mexican town of Comalaor Onetti's Santa María (thinking about space, fictional spaces). A project of this type would be more than acceptable.
2. You could choose from the following list of suggested texts in order to have a starting point for your project.
1861: Isaacs, Jorge //María//. - This is another of the novels that Sommer considers a national romance. It is undoubtedly the most widely-read Latin
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
American novel of the 19th century. In this work you will see an aristocratic family, their slaves and many costumbrista scenes portraying the life of people from various rural Colombian social classes. In the end, however, this is an example of the purist Latin American Romanticism complete with tormented lovers thwarted by fate.
1845: Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, Facundo or Civilization or Barbarism- We will have seen a couple of fragments from this work during class, but you could certainly use the entire work as part of an exploration that would count as your final project. As you know, Sarmiento uses this essay (in the purest essais sense of the word) to put forth his project for the "civilization" of Argentina. He "novelizes" the caudillo Facundo Quiroga into a barbarous anti-hero for whom, in an odd way, he has some respect for. A comparison of Sarmiento‘s thinking to Rodó's word-view would make for very interesting work.
1849: Manzano, Juan Francisco. Autobiography of a Slave - Manzano‘s autobiography is a fascinating tail of the arduous and humiliating life of a Cuban slave. The most interesting, perhaps, is the story of it's publication by English abolitionists. The number of hands that touched this text throughout the editing process and the context in which it was published leave the work and the politics of the period irremediably intertwined. This work could be studied alongside the Sab or any of the other stories of slavocracy.
1879: Hernández, José, Martín Fierro, This prototype of gauchesco poetry is the first-person "singing" of the abuses suffered by the gauchos (rural cowboy-types who roamed the Argentine pampa) up until the young but rapidly-modernizing Argentine nation pushed them off their lands to make way for European immigrants. This long poem could lend itself to comparisons with Sarmiento's Facundo.
1889: Matto de Turner, Clorinda. Birds Without a Nest - This is a prime example of an indigenista novel, indeed, one of the first. Matto de Turner tells a sordid tale of love and corruption in the Peruvian highlands. Much of the impossible-love structure remains from the century of Romanticism, but Matto de Turner's novel digs deeply (and quite explicitly) into many Peruvian social issues. She is particularly concerned with the role of the Catholic church in society, the modernization of the country as a whole and, of course, the lamentable situation of Peru's indigenous majority.
1894: Zeno Gandía, Manuel. The Pond - Widely considered to be the first Puerto Rican novel, The Pond gives a naturalist examination of the difficult life on the Carribean island-nation's coffee plantation. In the Naturalist mode (championed by Zola) Manuel Zeno Gandía, who was a physician, examines Puerto Rican society as if it were an ailing patient. Showing up close the worst of her symptoms and suggesting a series of cures.
1869-1895 Martí, José - Martí is considered by many to be the father of el modernismo. His writings strongly influenced poets like Darío, who outlived him by many years. He is undoubtedly Cuba's most influential political essayist and one her most known poets. We will read his essay 'Our America' in class, but you may choose to examine a wider selection of his poetry and/or essays.
1900: Rodó, José Enrique, Ariel - This book-length essay take the dichotomous metaphor of Shakespeare's The Tempest to sing the importance of the spiritual, artistic and aesthetic sensibilities in Latin American culture. This book is in many ways a reaction against the pervasivness of 19th-century postivism and the spread of North American cultural (and military) influence after 1898. Some interesting comparative studies might look at Rodó's thinking when compared to predecessors like Sarmiento, or his influence on contemporary thinkers like Fenández Retamar (see below).
1867-1916: Darío, Rubén - His 1888 book of poems (Azul) and his death in 1916 are for many critics the beginning and ending el modernismo, an aesthetic reflective of the fin de siecle decadence that gripped much of Western culture. Darío is widely considered to be the first Latin American poet whose work,
Rubén Darío
instead of being shaped by Spanish poets, was absolutely fundamental for the development of the Spanish poets of his day. Any of Darío's books of either poetry or prose would be extraordinarily worthy objects of study.
1914-1953 de Burgos, Julia - At the age of 39 this Caribbean poetess died tragically and anonymously in the streets of Spanish Harlem. Her work explores issues of gender, diaspora, man's relation to nature, and the creative process itself. Her third and final book was published posthumously to great acclaim and she is known today as one of Puerto Rico's most important poetic voices.
1902-1989 Guillén, Nicolás - Guillén's poems sing the mixed Afro-Hispanic heritage of the island. Percussive, rythmic, exotic and streetwise, his work explores the politics of race as well as the poetic side boxing, bars, the sea and many more seemingly prosaic themes. Like his North American friend and colleague, Langston Hughes (comparative study?) Guillén's attention was captured by the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and his work, like that of so many other poets, took a turn toward the ideological.
1889-1957 MistralGabriela - Gabriela's deeply personal poetry reflects on nature, loss, maternity and Latin American identity. A tireless educator and prolific poet, she was the first Chilean and indeed the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945. Gabriela Mistral lived most of her adult life outside of her country working as a diplomat. She is universally known as one of the regions most resounding poetic voices.
1904-1973 Neruda, Pablo Neruda is probably the most prolific and certainly the most well-known Latin American poet outside of his home country of Chile. His career was so long and bore fruit to so many notable books of poems that he is impossible to classify. Neruda's early work reflected the avant-garde aesthetic of the time, though he is known as a great writer of love poems and sonnets. Also, odes to every-day objects are a can't miss. Any of his works (including his autobiography) would be interesting to a lover of poetry.
1892-1938 Vallejo, César One of the great avant-garde innovators, César Vallejo spent much of his adult life outside of his native land of Peru. His writing serves as a connection between the timelessness of the largely indigenous region of Peru where he grew up, and the most revolutionary avant-garde experimation of the 1920's and 1930's. He had published only three books before dying of unknown causes, but the rest of his work was published posthumously. Any of his books of poems, essays or manifestos would make for a fascinating study.
1904-1935 Quiroga, Horacio Having begun his career at a modernista poet (one of his children was named Darío), Quiroga soon became one of Latin America's preeminent writers of short fiction. His work reveals the brutal natural world with which the South American pioneer was confronted as he tried to scratch out a living in the countryside. Quiroga's life was marked by violence and depression, and his writing makes this abundantly clear. An interesting comparative study might iniclude lalter masters of short fiction (Borges, for example) or one of Quiroga's strongest influences, the North American Edgar Allen Poe.
1924 Rivera, José Eustasio, The Vortex This novel is written from the point of view of a Romantic poet who flees Bogotá with his pregnant girlfriend into the llanos and eventually to the jungles that make up the uncharted borderlands between Columbia, Venezuela and Brasil. This novel is in many ways autobiographical, giving voice to the many hopeless peons that Rivera men when Columbia sent him on a surveying expedition to chart the national borders. This shows the many horrors suffered by rubber workers in the Orinoco River Valley, as well as the ecological disaster of the rubber plantations. What starts as a Romantic story of love gone wrong degenerates into the musings of a madman driven crazy by the threats of the jungle itself. This work would make an outstanding study for anybody interested in environmentalism, gender issues and questions of human rights.
1958 Arguedas, José María publishes Deep Rivers, a semi-autobiographical novel about a young Peruvian boy who comes of age with one foot in the seemingly mystical world of the Peruvian indigenous population and one foot in a strict Catholic boarding school. Aguedas' novel is one of the best contemporary examples of the hybridization of modern Latin American culture and language.
What on earth should I do for my final project?
1. Do a comparative study with one of the works that we read as a group in class.
For example, you might do a comparative study between Sab and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin(the most known North American abolitionist novel), of Jorge Isaacs' María (a Columbian 'national romance' published in the 19th century). On another note, you could look at some of the William Faulkner stories about the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Bernardo Atxaga's Basque village of Obaba, Juan Rulfo's Mexican town of Comalaor Onetti's Santa María (thinking about space, fictional spaces). A project of this type would be more than acceptable.
2. You could choose from the following list of suggested texts in order to have a starting point for your project.
1861: Isaacs, Jorge //María//. - This is another of the novels that Sommer considers a national romance. It is undoubtedly the most widely-read Latin
1845: Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, Facundo or Civilization or Barbarism- We will have seen a couple of fragments from this work during class, but you could certainly use the entire work as part of an exploration that would count as your final project. As you know, Sarmiento uses this essay (in the purest essais sense of the word) to put forth his project for the "civilization" of Argentina. He "novelizes" the caudillo Facundo Quiroga into a barbarous anti-hero for whom, in an odd way, he has some respect for. A comparison of Sarmiento‘s thinking to Rodó's word-view would make for very interesting work.
1849: Manzano, Juan Francisco. Autobiography of a Slave - Manzano‘s autobiography is a fascinating tail of the arduous and humiliating life of a Cuban slave. The most interesting, perhaps, is the story of it's publication by English abolitionists. The number of hands that touched this text throughout the editing process and the context in which it was published leave the work and the politics of the period irremediably intertwined. This work could be studied alongside the Sab or any of the other stories of slavocracy.
1879: Hernández, José, Martín Fierro, This prototype of gauchesco poetry is the first-person "singing" of the abuses suffered by the gauchos (rural cowboy-types who roamed the Argentine pampa) up until the young but rapidly-modernizing Argentine nation pushed them off their lands to make way for European immigrants. This long poem could lend itself to comparisons with Sarmiento's Facundo.
1889: Matto de Turner, Clorinda. Birds Without a Nest - This is a prime example of an indigenista novel, indeed, one of the first. Matto de Turner tells a sordid tale of love and corruption in the Peruvian highlands. Much of the impossible-love structure remains from the century of Romanticism, but Matto de Turner's novel digs deeply (and quite explicitly) into many Peruvian social issues. She is particularly concerned with the role of the Catholic church in society, the modernization of the country as a whole and, of course, the lamentable situation of Peru's indigenous majority.
1894: Zeno Gandía, Manuel. The Pond - Widely considered to be the first Puerto Rican novel, The Pond gives a naturalist examination of the difficult life on the Carribean island-nation's coffee plantation. In the Naturalist mode (championed by Zola) Manuel Zeno Gandía, who was a physician, examines Puerto Rican society as if it were an ailing patient. Showing up close the worst of her symptoms and suggesting a series of cures.
1869-1895 Martí, José - Martí is considered by many to be the father of el modernismo. His writings strongly influenced poets like Darío, who outlived him by many years. He is undoubtedly Cuba's most influential political essayist and one her most known poets. We will read his essay 'Our America' in class, but you may choose to examine a wider selection of his poetry and/or essays.
1900: Rodó, José Enrique, Ariel - This book-length essay take the dichotomous metaphor of Shakespeare's The Tempest to sing the importance of the spiritual, artistic and aesthetic sensibilities in Latin American culture. This book is in many ways a reaction against the pervasivness of 19th-century postivism and the spread of North American cultural (and military) influence after 1898. Some interesting comparative studies might look at Rodó's thinking when compared to predecessors like Sarmiento, or his influence on contemporary thinkers like Fenández Retamar (see below).
1867-1916: Darío, Rubén - His 1888 book of poems (Azul) and his death in 1916 are for many critics the beginning and ending el modernismo, an aesthetic reflective of the fin de siecle decadence that gripped much of Western culture. Darío is widely considered to be the first Latin American poet whose work,
1914-1953 de Burgos, Julia - At the age of 39 this Caribbean poetess died tragically and anonymously in the streets of Spanish Harlem. Her work explores issues of gender, diaspora, man's relation to nature, and the creative process itself. Her third and final book was published posthumously to great acclaim and she is known today as one of Puerto Rico's most important poetic voices.
1902-1989 Guillén, Nicolás - Guillén's poems sing the mixed Afro-Hispanic heritage of the island. Percussive, rythmic, exotic and streetwise, his work explores the politics of race as well as the poetic side boxing, bars, the sea and many more seemingly prosaic themes. Like his North American friend and colleague, Langston Hughes (comparative study?) Guillén's attention was captured by the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and his work, like that of so many other poets, took a turn toward the ideological.
1889-1957 MistralGabriela - Gabriela's deeply personal poetry reflects on nature, loss, maternity and Latin American identity. A tireless educator and prolific poet, she was the first Chilean and indeed the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945. Gabriela Mistral lived most of her adult life outside of her country working as a diplomat. She is universally known as one of the regions most resounding poetic voices.
1892-1938 Vallejo, César One of the great avant-garde innovators, César Vallejo spent much of his adult life outside of his native land of Peru. His writing serves as a connection between the timelessness of the largely indigenous region of Peru where he grew up, and the most revolutionary avant-garde experimation of the 1920's and 1930's. He had published only three books before dying of unknown causes, but the rest of his work was published posthumously. Any of his books of poems, essays or manifestos would make for a fascinating study.
1904-1935 Quiroga, Horacio Having begun his career at a modernista poet (one of his children was named Darío), Quiroga soon became one of Latin America's preeminent writers of short fiction. His work reveals the brutal natural world with which the South American pioneer was confronted as he tried to scratch out a living in the countryside. Quiroga's life was marked by violence and depression, and his writing makes this abundantly clear. An interesting comparative study might iniclude lalter masters of short fiction (Borges, for example) or one of Quiroga's strongest influences, the North American Edgar Allen Poe.
1924 Rivera, José Eustasio, The Vortex This novel is written from the point of view of a Romantic poet who flees Bogotá with his pregnant girlfriend into the llanos and eventually to the jungles that make up the uncharted borderlands between Columbia, Venezuela and Brasil. This novel is in many ways autobiographical, giving voice to the many hopeless peons that Rivera men when Columbia sent him on a surveying expedition to chart the national borders. This shows the many horrors suffered by rubber workers in the Orinoco River Valley, as well as the ecological disaster of the rubber plantations. What starts as a Romantic story of love gone wrong degenerates into the musings of a madman driven crazy by the threats of the jungle itself. This work would make an outstanding study for anybody interested in environmentalism, gender issues and questions of human rights.
1928 Mariátegui, José Carlos, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality
1929 de la Parra, Teresa, Souveneirs of Mama Blanca
1938 Bombal, María Luisa, The Shrouded Woman
1944 Borges, Jorge Luis, Fictions
1946 Asturia, Miguel Ángel, The President
1949 Carpentier, Alejo, The Kingdom of This World
1953-1955 Rulfo, Juan, Pedro Páramo,The Burning Plain
1958 Arguedas, José María publishes Deep Rivers, a semi-autobiographical novel about a young Peruvian boy who comes of age with one foot in the seemingly mystical world of the Peruvian indigenous population and one foot in a strict Catholic boarding school. Aguedas' novel is one of the best contemporary examples of the hybridization of modern Latin American culture and language.
1962 Fuentes, Carlos, The Death of Artemio Cruz
1963 Cortázar, Julio, Hopscotch
1971 Fernández Retamar, Roberto, Calibán
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